Good evening Ram Family! We are down to the last two official weeks of the XC season for 2024! It feels like we just started but it’s nearly over. We had a terrific showing last week at the Conference Meet! Both of our JH teams finished fifth with Journey Owens and Jack Kidwell earning All-Conference honors. For the HS teams we finished first in three of the four races as a team and had three individual winners! Both of our HS Girls’ teams finished 1st in dominating fashion with Bella Nelson, Ava Cornelius, Lillith Johnson, and Quinn Thomason finishing 1st-4th in the Varsity race and earning All-Conference honors. Also, earning All-Conference for the girls Varsity were Audrey Toews and Bijoux Milien. Congrats also to Stella Jones for winning the JV race and leading our JV girls to a perfect score! The boys Varsity finished 3rd with Evan Carter and Nos Graham earning All-Conference honors. Collin Yost followed with a fantastic come-from-behind win in the JV race! It might be the most boring course on the planet and the wind was howling but our kids ran great!
This week, ORXC is hosting the OSSAA East Regional XC Meet at O’Brien Park. We have hosted six of the past ten years. The years we didn’t we were on a bus at the crack of dawn driving to Ponca City to run on a ridiculous course, we ran two years at Sand Springs on an even more ridiculous course (there was literally SWIMMING across a creek one year and one of our girls fell off a levy), and one year on a hilly course at BA. Is it a lot of work to host? Yes, but it means we get to control the course, our kids get to run first and not have to get up at 5:00 am, we can be confident there will be no swimming, there will be no mountain climbing, and we get to purchase equipment for the program courtesy of the OSSAA. The pros outweigh the cons for sure. With that in mind, we still need help from our parents and runners to make it happen. Please consider coming out to help for a few hours, watch some fantastic races, and continue to make ORXC one of the best programs in the state! Here is the link for volunteers…
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/60B0F4AA8A92FA1FE3-50386241-2024#
For our JV runners, we will continue to train for the rest of the season but for most athletes, they are done racing. We will still have some time trials to keep them engaged but practices will be a little shorter for the next few weeks as we gradually wind things down. When we come back from Thanksgiving Break we will start picking it back up as we head towards the 2025 Track season.
While State is officially the last race of the Oklahoma XC season, we will take as many runners as we can to the Nike Regional Cross Country Meet in Houston on November 23rd. This will be our 4th year to attend NXR. Each year we’ve been more competitive as we attempt to not only stay strong in Oklahoma but in the five state region. Last year our girls program finished 10th in the Championship race and our Up and Coming girls finished 3rd. Teams must qualify for the Championship race but we can take any freshman and sophomore runner to the Up and Coming race. Our plan this year is to take any Varsity team that makes the Championship race and several of our young runners based on their performance for the season. We want those kids to see the competition, experience the meet, and want to work hard to make the Championship race in the future. We will put together a roster and talk to runners about going over the next two weeks.
Lastly, we are always working to feed your kids! If you can please, send some snacks to these hardworking runners…
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/60B0F4AA8A92FA1FE3-50386237-2024#
It’s Championship time! We took three out of six races at Conference but we aren’t done yet! Come out and cheer on the Varsity squads as they go get after the competition this week and next week.
Thank you for all you do! GO RAMS!!!
Weekly Schedule